Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Artificial Intelligence Book

This book on artificial intelligence sounds pretty interesting. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig. My dad has said he is interested in artificial intelligence, and he is working on a "knowledge base" program, which is kind of like a blog on steroids. I never was interested in the aspect of artificial intelligence where we try to make a machine "smart" by emulating how human brains work. However, it sounds like I had the wrong impression of artificial intelligence because it is always so closely associated with robotics. It sounds like it is more about logic and relating information, which is more interesting. This might not necessarily be that different from emulating how brains work, but the task seems more significant (helping people sort information) than having a robot that can do some random thing autonomously. Most things that you would want a robot to help with could be automated anyway or controlled without AI.